If you are a business that accepts credit cards as a payment method from your customers and clients, it imperative that your payment systems are PCI compliant. If you do not ensure such compliance, you are at risk of being decertified and no longer allowed to accept credit or debit cards.

When paying for goods and services.

Security is a very serious concern for buyers who choose to use their credit cards.Consumers want to be sure that their payment details are stored and transmitted in an encrypted format so that they don’t get stolen. Millions of payment transactions are carried out each year and PCI compliance and fraud prevention should be a business’s top priority. Small vendors who don’t take steps to implement PCI DSS compliance could lose their ability to accept credit and debit cards, including Visa, MasterCard, and American Express.

When a business loses its ability to process credit card payments on site following decertification, the consequences can be far-reaching. These days few people carry a lot of cash around and a lot of people like to put all of their spending on a credit card in order to make it easy to track their monthly spending and earn cashback and reward points from card providers. What’s more, the public knows that paying for things with a credit card provides them with enhanced consumer protection. Businesses that can no longer accept credit cards will also find it difficult to sell online and over the phone.

Being PCI compliant ensures that you are adequately protecting any and all payment information you hold for your customers. The data on your business’s computer systems needs to have tight restrictions on who can access it. All employees need to use more than one process of authentication when logging in to the system from remote locations. In addition, encryption of all data transmitted is essential. You need to use the latest security encryption protocols.

All businesses should be worried about PCI compliance.

Even businesses that only process one credit card transaction a year. The number of payment transactions does not matter and even businesses using third-party payment providers like Google Checkout and PayPal need to ensure they are PCI compliant. If your business website’s security is breached and it is discovered that you are not meeting all of the PCI compliance requirements, the penalties can be huge. Your business could be sued up to half a million dollars. In addition, the damage the breach will do to your reputations may take decades to recover from. Read here about Affordable Payment Solutions .

ID theft and credit card theft is something that everyone is worried about. So, make sure you take steps to protect your customers and clients by meeting all of the PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) compliance requirements. There are many helpful guides on the internet that you can access to find out everything you need to know about meeting and exceeding the requirements. Don’t risk getting fined and compromising the security of your customer’s payment details. Read about merchant services for small business .